Feb. 6 (Bloomberg) -- Tokyo Electric Power Co., Japan’s
biggest consumer of liquefied natural gas, plans to buy the fuel
from the Cameron project in the U.S. through Mitsui & Co. and
Mitsubishi Corp. to reduce its energy costs.

The company known as Tepco plans to buy at least 400,000
tons a year of LNG each from Mitsui and Mitsubishi at U.S. Henry
Hub linked prices for 20 years from 2017, it said in a
statement.

Japan paid 63,200 yen ($674) for a metric ton of LNG in
November according to data from the country’s Ministry of
Finance. That’s equivalent to $15.31 per million British thermal
units, compared with $3.43 for benchmark gas futures at Henry
Hub in Louisiana.

Tepco is close to securing another 1.2 million tons of LNG
a year from other suppliers beside Cameron, Toshihiro Sano, the
utility’s managing executive officer, told reporters in Tokyo
today. He declined to identify them.

The utility has concluded the deal with Mitsui and is close
to a similar agreement with Mitsubishi, it said. The Cameron LNG
terminal will be built in Louisiana and is expected to produce
the first LNG in mid-2017, Octavio Simoes, president of Sempra
LNG, said in January.

Tepco’s fuel costs to run gas and other thermal plants will
reach a record 2.81 trillion yen ($30 billion) this fiscal year
as all of its nuclear reactors are offline because of the
Fukushima atomic disaster in 2011. Projected prices for the
liquefied fuel from North America are lower because of increased
supplies of shale gas.